28-Nov-2001 -- And again we made it. This Confluence would be the last for 2001 since holidays are coming and all of us are looking forward to some individual trips outside the country.

So we went off Friday (our Sunday), 28 November in order to hit the 25N 45E. We decided on that point after two unsuccessful attempts on the 25N 46E that is closer to Riyāḍ, but unfortunately inaccessible by land mobiles, because it is right on top of the escarpment. We could approach only as close as 1.8 kilometre.

The road to the 25N 45E led us the same way out of Riyāḍ on the highway in direction southwest and then northwest via Ḍurmā to Marrat. In Marrat there is the choice of continuing the road via Šaqrā' and then leave that road after further 45 kilometres at the closest point into the desert heading east. We decided to challenge our fortune and took the straight way out of Marrat heading westwards into huge farming areas. That area is called Farms of Maghar.

Lucky we were, because it turned out, that the road was lately paved with tarmac and we could quickly forward another 48 kilometres. Then the road turned into an unpaved track, but still led us an exciting zigzag course around the fences of the farms. It was exciting, because one never knew whether the driven direction led to a dead end, and so it did twice.

In general the area is very flat and brownish, covered with black volcanic stones like sugar on a cake, and only some very small river beds mark the plains. Unfortunately this doesn’t provide any interesting view for taking pictures as one can see.

After fixing the point, and because it was quite windy, we continued our excursion westwards to the next road and back towards Riyāḍ. Getting hungry of the breathtaking activities we had a stopover for a nice and social picnic in the early afternoon next to Šaqrā'. After that we decided to take a roundtrip and not to follow back the same road to Riyāḍ. Instead we went back via al-Qaṣab, Raġaba, Ḥuraymalā' and Malham entering Riyāḍ from the north. The whole trip took us 9 hours and was a very nice sightseeing.